The Mariinsky Theatre is dedicating a series of events during the XXVII Stars of the White Nights Music Festival to Hector Berlioz, marking 150 years since the French composer's death.
On 18 June at the Mariinsky-II Valery Gergiev will be conducting Hector Berlioz' grandiose duologue Les Troyens. The lead roles will be performed by Mikhail Vekua (Enée), Grigory Chernetsov (Chorèbe), Anna Markarova (Cassandre), Yulia Matochkina (Didon), Nikolai Kamensky (Panthée), Oleg Sychov (Narbal), Lyudmila Dudinova (Ascagne), Anna Kiknadze (Anna) and Vladimir Feliauer (Priam).
The history of the opera Les Troyens in Russia began several years after the Paris premiere. In 1867 the composer, who had been invited to St Petersburg for some concerts, wrote that "Yesterday I was visited by ten or twelve of Russia's leading performers and critics, and they severely reprimanded me for not bringing the sheet-music for Les Troyens with me. They want large extracts of this work to be performed following the sixth concert at the conservatoire. They all know Les Troyens from the score." But it would only be more than a century later that Les Troyens came to be performed in St Petersburg for the first time. The production at the St Petersburg Conservatory Theatre was conducted by Sergei Stadler. In the 2000s, the Mariinsky Theatre turned to the opus for the first time. Concert performances of the opera have taken place in St Petersburg, at the Red Sea Festival in Eilat and at New York's Carnegie Hall; subsequently, in collaboration with Spain's La Fura dels Baus theatre company, a stage version of Les Troyens was premiered in Valencia and at the historic Mariinsky Theatre (25 December 2009). Five years later, the theatre once again turned to Hector Berlioz' dulogue. Renowned Greek stage director Yannis Kokkos presented Les Troyens as a mystery of ancient times – from the majestic sets and elaborate costumes to the similarly expressed plastique mise-en-scènes and from the brilliantly staged lighting to the harmoniously balanced sound gamma.
On 26 June and 17 July the Concert Hall will host a performance of the symphonie dramatique Roméo et Juliette based on William Shakespeare's tragedy. The vocal roles are to be performed by Yulia Matochkina (mezzo-soprano) and Alexander Mikhailov (tenor), аs well as Mikhail Petrenko (bass) on 26 June and Stanislav Trofimov (bass) on 17 July. The Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus will be conducted by Valery Gergiev (26 June) and Christian Knapp (17 July).
The symphonie dramatique Roméo et Juliette, on which Hector Berlioz spent almost thirty years from the birth of the idea to its final fruition, is considered to be one of the composer's most perfect works. Writing the score, immense in length and dramatic scale, took just over half a year, although following the premiere in 1839 the composer returned to the work on several occasions, making various amendments (the last dating to 1858). The composer called his opus a symphonie dramatique, wishing to express not so much the tragic essence of its subject as the theatricality of its form. In addition to an orchestra, performing the symphony involves the participation of a chorus and soloists, who are interpreted at times as a cast (the chorus being the Montagues and Capulets, the soloists being Mercutio and Friar Laurence), at others as "the voice from the author". Hector Berlioz limited himself to embodying only the events focussed on in the first and last acts of Shakespeare's play, though these are all examined in great detail: they are spoken about by the chorus (Prologue), they come vividly to life (the dramatic episodes) and the generalised imagistic content is conveyed using purely orchestral music.
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